Can we feel others' emotions?

Mantis, from Guardians Of The Galaxy, is an empath. Do we feel the same way, too?

- STEPHEN KELLY

There is a scene in Guardians Of  The Galaxy Vol 2, the Marvel movie released in 2017, where the character of Mantis – an alien played by Pom Klementieff – touches Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill on the hand. “You feel love!” she tells him, her face beaming. “I guess, yeah,” he replies, nervously. “I feel a general, unselfish love for just about everybody…” “No! Romantic, sexual love,” she says, before pointing a finger at Quill’s teammate, Zoe Saldana’s Gamora. “For her!”

Some superheroes have superstrength. Others f ly. Mantis’s superpower is a souped-up version of empathy, meaning that she can touch someone and feel their emotions as though they were her own. Yet according to neuroscientist Dr Dean Burnett, author of new book Emotional Ignorance, this isn’t quite as fantastical as it sounds. In fact, it’s merely an extreme version of something we already do.